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A Forward-Body-Bias Tuned 450MHz Gm-C 3rd-Order Low-Pass Filter in 28nm UTBB FD-SOI with >1dBVp IIP3 over a
0.7-to-1V Supply
Joeri Lechevallier1,2, Remko Struiksma1, Hani Sherry2, Andreia Cathelin2, Eric Klumperink1, Bram Nauta1
1
University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands,
2
STMicroelectronics, Crolles, France
Due to the absence of internal nodes, inverter-based Gm-C filters [1,2] allow achieving bandwidths beyond what is possible
with opamp-RC techniques. The inverter’s class-AB behavior, together with the high transconductance per quiescent current,
results in a high dynamic range per power when optimally biased [3]. The major disadvantage of traditional inverter-based GmC filters is that they are tuned with the supply voltage (VDD), hence requiring a finely controllable supply. Voltage regulators
used to accomplish this imply a voltage headroom (including margin for tuning) and degrade total power efficiency by tens of
percent. In this paper, we show that by exploiting body biasing in an Ultra-Thin BOX and Body, Fully-Depleted SOI (UTBB FDSOI) CMOS technology, we overcome the requirement for a tunable V DD in inverter-based Gm-C filters, while achieving a high
linearity over a wide supply voltage range.
A cross-section of an UTBB FD-SOI CMOS inverter is shown in Fig. 5.5.1 [4]. The buried oxide (BOX) underneath the active
devices isolates the drains and sources from the bulk, allowing the transistor body to be used as a back-gate, hence enabling
significant threshold voltage (Vt) shifts. Low-Vt devices in this technology are implemented as 'flip-well' transistors, where the Nand PMOS lay above n- and p-wells respectively. Due to the BOX isolation, there are no drain- and source-to-bulk parasitic
diodes, which in bulk technology limit the maximum Forward Body Bias (FBB) range. For 28nm UTBB FD-SOI LVT transistors,
a FBB up to 3V is allowed. Combined with a higher sensitivity to the body bias (85mV/V in UTBB FD-SOI vs. 25mV/V in bulk),
this allows Vt to be varied by approximately 250mV, much more than the tens of mV in bulk technologies. This directly implies
that the sum of the overdrive voltages of N- and PMOS can be kept constant over hundreds of mV supply range, hence
compensating for supply voltage variations. Alternatively, FBB can be used to tune the transconductors. Body biasing requires
negligible current (<1nA), consisting only of leakage currents of reverse-biased diodes.
Illustrated in the bottom left plot of Fig. 5.5.1 is the change of the Gm curve of a differential CMOS inverter over V DD variations.
Without body biasing, Gm changes and linearity is degraded. For high VDD, the inverter behavior is compressive (mobility
reduction), while for low VDD it is expansive (exponential region). Only one V DD results in a flat Gm-curve, which means that it
produces little 3rd order distortion. Body biasing can be applied to tune Gm back to its nominal value over different V DD, without
linearity degradation, as illustrated in the bottom right plot of Fig. 5.5.1. We apply this technique to a low-pass (LP) Gm-C filter
to keep the cut-off frequency (Fc) constant and to guarantee high linearity over a 300mV supply voltage range. Local supply
decoupling is still required, but the separate voltage regulator can be omitted. Without this technique, the same supply variation
would have shifted the cut-off frequency between 110 and 650MHz and degraded IIP3 by more than 10dB.
The LP filter topology shown in Fig. 5.5.2 is derived from a 3rd order, doubly terminated Butterworth LC ladder prototype using
gyrator synthesis [1]. The transconductors and MOM capacitors are sized for a nominal Fc of 450MHz. The use of 110nm gate
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lengths in 28nm UTBB FD-SOI technology makes the transconductor output resistance sufficiently constant and well controlled
that it can be compensated by a fixed negative resistance, eliminating the need for Q-tuning as used in previous designs
[1,2,5]. The increased MOSFET parasitic capacitances are absorbed in the filter capacitances. The common-mode (CM) loop
gain must be kept below unity, which is accomplished by inverters gm b and gmc [1]. We choose gm b=0.350·gma and
gmc=0.325·gma to minimize noise and power consumption, while still ensuring common-mode stability and output resistance
cancellation [2].
As shown in Fig. 5.5.2, all NMOS and PMOS are body biased by VBBN (biased from 0 to 3V) and VBBP (biased from 0 to -3V)
respectively. Impedance up-scaling by a factor 2 is applied to the last nodes (N3) to achieve unity gain overall, while reducing
power consumption. To measure the filter in a 50Ω environment, inverter buffers are added at the filter output, and 50Ω
resistors terminate the in- and output. A reference path is integrated on chip to enable de-embedding of the filter core [1]. The
chip, of which a photograph is shown in Fig. 5.5.7, is integrated in STMicroelectronics 28nm UTBB FD-SOI technology. The
filter core occupies 0.04mm2, of which 0.03mm 2 are filter capacitors.
The S-parameters of the filter-, reference-path and PCB crosstalk were measured, from which the transfer function of the filter
core was de-embedded. Using FBB tuning, the filter Fc is kept constant at 450MHz for a V DD varying from 0.7 to 1V. Fig. 5.5.3
shows the measured filter transfer function. This figure also shows another tuning strategy where VDD is fixed at 0.9V, and Fc is
varied between 190MHz and 900MHz using FBB tuning between 0 and 3V.
The filter paths (including output buffers) 3rd order intermodulation distortion is measured with 2 in-band tones at 300±0.5MHz.
Fig. 5.5.4 shows the IIP3 for different VDD, where VBBP and VBBN have been varied, showing that for every supply level the
IIP3 can be maximized. Fig. 5.5.5 shows the IM3 and fundamental against input power when Fc is tuned to 450MHz, for
different VDD values. These curves extrapolate to an IIP3 above 1.2dBVp. The 1dB compression point was measured by
sweeping the power of a single 300MHz tone, and varies between -10.3 and -4.8dBVp. The input noise power spectral density
(PSD) of the de-embedded filter core is approximately 6nV/Hz, and power consumption between 4mW and 5.6mW over the
0.7–1V supply range.
The filter performance is summarized and compared to four other recent Gm-C filters with a cut-off frequency above 100MHz in
Fig. 5.5.6. Three key performance figures (noise, linearity and power consumption) can be easily traded against each other; the
noise PSD can be reduced by impedance scaling at the expense of a proportional increase in power consumption [3], while
linearity can be improved at the expense of noise by attenuating the input, keeping the dynamic range the same. To allow
comparison of the different circuits, taking these design freedoms into account, we calculate their Normalized Signal-to-Noise
Ratio (NSNR) in the last row of Fig. 5.5.6 [3]. Compared to previous work we achieve either a much higher linearity [5], or a
lower noise level [6] and lower power consumption. Compared to the most similar filter in [2] we obtain over 3dB higher SFDR
at lower power consumption, while not needing a regulated supply. The SFDR of our design is 3dB lower than [7], yet
consumes 12 times less power. This performance is maintained over a 0.7–1V supply range.
This paper has demonstrated that the extended body biasing range in UTBB FD-SOI, applied to an inverter-based Gm-C filter,
can save a significant amount of power while accommodating supply voltage variations, without performance degradation and
with competitive linearity.
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References
[1] B. Nauta, “A CMOS Transconductance-C Filter Technique for Very High Frequencies,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 27,
no. 2, pp. 142–153, Feb. 1992
[2] F. Houfaf, et al., “A 65nm CMOS 1-to-10GHz Tunable Continuous-Time Low-pass Filter for High-Data-Rate
Communications,” IEEE ISSCC Dig. of tech. papers, pp. 362–364, 2012
[3] E. A. M. Klumperink and B. Nauta, “Systematic comparison of HF CMOS Transconductors,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II,
Analog Digit. Signal Process., vol. 50, no. 10, pp. 728–741, Oct. 2003
[4] D. Jacquet, et al., “A 3 GHz Dual Core Processor ARM Cortex TM-A9 in 28 nm UTBB FD-SOI CMOS With Ultra-Wide
Voltage Range and Energy Efficiency Optimization,” J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 812–826, Apr. 2014.
[5] V. Saari, et al., “A 240-MHz Low-Pass Filter With Variable Gain in 65-nm CMOS for a UWB Radio Receiver,” IEEE Trans.
Circuits Syst. I, Reg. Papers, vol. 56, no. 7, pp. 1488–1499, Jul. 2009.
[6] M. Mobarak, et al., “Attenuation-Predistortion Linearization of CMOS OTAs With Digital Correction of Process Variations in
OTA-C Filter Applications,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 351–367, Feb. 2010
[7] K. Kwon, et al., “A 50–300-MHz Highly Linear and Low-Noise CMOS Gm-C Filter Adopting Multiple Gated Transistors for
Digital TV Tuner ICs,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 306–313, Feb. 2009
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Figure 1. Inverter cross section with typical gm curves
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Figure 2. Chip schematic
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Figure 3. De-embedded transfer function
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Figure 4. IIP3 versus forward body bias, for different supplies
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Figure 5. IIP3 and gain compression
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Figure 6. Performance summary and comparison
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Figure 7. Chip photograph
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